24. Your company has just been acquired and you don't want your new overlord to succeed.

25. You know there's no one to pitch your new ideas to -- and even if there was, it's a long shot they would listen.

26. You're concerned that your great idea is so great that it will actually be accepted and then you will be expected to work on it in your spare time (which you don't have) with no extra resources made available to you.

27. All your great ideas are focused on trying to get Gina or Gary, in Marketing, to give you the time of day.

28. You're a new parent.

29. You've got other projects, outside of work, and have no energy left to think about anything else.

30. They don't pay you enough to think creatively.

31. You're expected to leave your mind at the door when you come to work.

98. You're only working there to beef up your resume for the next job.

99. A vast right wing conspiracy.

100. You let too many of the aforementioned 99 phenomena have their way with you. Your resulting assessment of the corporate environment not being conducive to the origination of great ideas then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I agree with Jim that "#100 is powerful in its devaluation of the former 99 and of a list like this." Why is that even included if this is meant to be a serious list?

I'm not as confident as he seems to be that your work would necessarily result in a guide for innovative workplaces. But I do hope you share more about how you got input from 10,000 people and more about the make up of the list. For example, why would a list from 10,000 people include some of the glib comments in the list. Did several people really say something like "because they're staring at you" or "no alcohol?"

Also, I had hoped you'd share the most common answers to your question about where people get their best ideas - you position that as the hook. We all have our list of guesses based on experience and urban myth, but that would be a very interesting list if it's based on 20+ years of research.

Posted by: Alice MacGillivray at January 1, 2011 07:43 PM

Jim and Alice:

Thanks for your feedback. The wording of my 100th reason may have been a bit misleading (so I have taken the liberty of refining it). I was not attempting to devalue the previous 99 "reasons." What I was attempting to communicate was the phenomenon of people using any of the 99 as reasons/excuses for NOT coming up with their best ideas. No corporate environment is perfect. There are constraints, bureaucracy, and dysfunctional environments everywhere. True innovators, however, do not bail out just because the workplace is not ideal.

I've written a lot about "culture of innovation" and you can find some useful articles of mine on my blog by clicking http://tinyurl.com/25b6p58 or simply clicking on "culture of innovation" in the sidebar.

To Alice's point. Yes, the list was meant to be serious, though some of the seriousness is actually pretty funny when you step back and look at it from a distance.. The list, itself, is NOT a guide for innovative workplaces, nor was it meant to be. It is simply a list of the common reasons/excuses/phenomena that seem to keep showing up in corporate environments. What Alice refers to as "glib comments" are a combination of what I've heard my clients say and my own bent sense of humor. Personally, I find most corporate environments to be too repressive. In the name of "professionalism," people end up leaving their creativity and humanity at home. The playfulness, ease, fun, humor, spontaneity, and experimentation that are such a big part of the DNA of the creative process are all too often expunged from corporate environments.

I will soon repost an old article of mine on "where people get their best ideas" so you can get another (more constructive?) point of view about this matter.

Bottom line, people tell me they get their best ideas during "down time" when they are not under pressure, when they are able to incubate and process the flora and fauna of daily life. This incubation often happens in the commute home from work, just before sleep, in dreams, in the shower, or just upon waking. Exercise is another big catalyst -- not only because endorphins are kicking in but because the logical, rational, linear, left brain is getting a break and a more intuitive subconscious knowing surfaces.

My creating lists of complaints or common excuses, doesn't necessarily "fix" anything, I know, but it often sparks the kind of reflection and dialogue that DOES lead to positive change.

As Fritz Perls once said, "Awareness cures."

Posted by: Mitch Ditkoff at January 2, 2011 01:57 AM

Mitch

Interesting list.

Enjoyed reading it. May I share it with a couple audiences next week with full reference and credit to you and your blog?

Over the years I have done similar LIST collections using the internet.

Most of your 100 appeared on my LISTS except for the most recent ones due to the creation of new electronic distractors: Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc.

When I asked the perpetual question:

Where and When you get your ideas?

during a idea facilitation with scientists and technical people in South Africa in October I got the usual:

in the shower
in the bath
doing something else
watching tv
playing games or sports
driving
riding my bike
walking
running
etc.

none said...."AT WORK"

none said ...

"AT MY WORK STATION,
IN MY LAB,
AT MY DESK,
IN MY CUBICLE,
IN A MEETING"

then during the next 3 hours we proceeded to generate many ideas for a very serious problem their research center is being asked to work on

"ROBBERY OF ATM MACHINES"

using idea generation tools and techiques in an open environment where the people want to generate ideas and are willingly supportive of each other once again demonstrated that you don't have to wait for ideas to SUDDENLY come.

Enjoyed reading it. May I share it with a couple audiences next week with full reference and credit to you and your blog?

Over the years I have done similar LIST collections using the internet.

Most of your 100 appeared on my LISTS except for the most recent ones due to the creation of new electronic distractors: Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc.

When I asked the perpetual question:

Where and When you get your ideas?

during a idea facilitation with scientists and technical people in South Africa in October I got the usual:

in the shower
in the bath
doing something else
watching tv
playing games or sports
driving
riding my bike
walking
running
etc.

none said...."AT WORK"

none said ...

"AT MY WORK STATION,
IN MY LAB,
AT MY DESK,
IN MY CUBICLE,
IN A MEETING"

then during the next 3 hours we proceeded to generate many ideas for a very serious problem their research center is being asked to work on

"ROBBERY OF ATM MACHINES"

using idea generation tools and techiques in an open environment where the people want to generate ideas and are willingly supportive of each other once again demonstrated that you don't have to wait for ideas to SUDDENLY come.

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